NASA announces new discovery from life-hunting spacecraft

NASA will share the latest findings from its Kepler space telescope, which hunts for exoplanets that could potentially harbor life.

The latest discovery from NASA's space telescope is the result of analysis using machine learning technology. Photo: NASA

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will hold a press conference at 1 a.m. on December 15, Vietnam time, to announce new discoveries from the Kepler space telescope, which specializes in searching for planets that could harbor life, according to Space.com.

"This discovery is the result of researchers using machine learning technology from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence and represents a new way to analyze Kepler data," NASA said.

Experts attending the press conference included: Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington; Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California; Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, Austin; and Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Kepler detects exoplanets by monitoring dimming as planets pass in front of their host stars. It is the most prolific planet-hunting instrument in history. The spacecraft has found more than 2,500 officially confirmed planets, about 70% of all known planets, and an equally large number of planet candidates awaiting further analysis.

Most of these discoveries come from observations made by Kepler during its first mission, which ran from 2009 to 2013. Scientists are still poring over the data sets. Over the past few years, they have used improved analysis techniques to detect more exoplanets in Kepler data collected five years ago.

Kepler’s first mission, which focused on continuous observations of about 150,000 stars, ended in May 2013 when the spacecraft lost its second steering wheel. But operators quickly figured out how to stabilize Kepler using sunlight pressure. The spacecraft is now on a second mission, called K2, to search for more exoplanets and make other observations.

According to VNE